Phantasmagoria
Nathan Pohio There is a scene in a movie where for some reason the actor could
not show up on the day. So for that scene, a photograph of the actor
was used instead; held in front of the camera and moved about
appropriately within the frame. It was moved to suggest the action of a
character walking down the street. Pretty funny. Absurd even, that such
measures were taken to make that reality seem believable.
This glorious story is told by Nathan Pohio. And under the mantle
"Phantasmagoria", this young artist continues his exploration of two of
his favourite subjects: the idea of the moving image; and the
construction of reality in cinema.
He has restricted himself to the space of the domestic interior, as
he did in "Sleeper" from 1999. Using only that which surrounds him, he
has held in front of his camera an old lenticular (or holograph-like)
image of horses, and then carefully and very deliberately rocked it
back and forth; up and down. Nathan's is film of gentle movement – full
of tender grace and a painterly beauty. Intimacy becomes motion, focus
becomes blurred – and everything feels a/drift in suggestion and
association. Welcome to phantasmagoria: a headtrip; an apparition; a
series of things shifting and seen as in a dream.
Nathan Pohio: selected works
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Asleightofhandmanouvreringofastillimageintosomethingmoving 2006 DVD, 7” LCD screen, player, power supply, edition of 3
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Asleightofhandmanouvreringofastillimageintosomethingmoving 2006 DVD, player, data projectors, edition of 3
Nathan would like to acknowledge the Creative New Zealand Screen
Innovation Production Fund and Ngai Tahu Development Corporation. Lonnie Hutchinson Lonnie
Hutchinson's take on the phantasm is more akin to that of visual
fallacy. Untitled (Garden) is an augmented reality work, where virtual
objects are presented through hooded binoculars, in a viewing station
over real time.
Lonnie's Garden is phantom, a pipe dream. Pigeons glide between trees
that look as though they are planted in the gallery. But these trees
are tracery cut to patterns Lonnie has gotten us to know – from the
tight buds of kowhaiwhai, to the rhythms and geometries of tapa, siapo
and weaving. Once paper, these motifs now grow on top of one another
stacked in Brancusi-like towers – their reproduction and repetition a
grand illusion, intimate in scale. In Phantasmagoria (1), Tahi is their
one solid manifestation.
But back to hyper-reality, where Nova Paul (2) has us bird watching. In
Hitchcock she notes, birds are talismen of psychic and sexual
disturbance – they are symptomatic of an order that has been messed
with.
Hutchinson’s Garden, in its simple interplay between a virtual and an
actual space tells a similar story of disruption. If we think about
where we are here, we may begin to ask what this space was before it
was all this. Do the birds come to warn us? To protect us? Or to reveal
that this space, this space of art, politics and indigeneity is somehow
out of kilter?
Lonnie Hutchinson: selected works
1. Tahi
2. Tahi and untitled (garden) - installation
3. Untitled (garden) - viewing station
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